#historicalfiction

Tessa Garcia dreams of working for the famous Paris-based perfume maker, Francois Coty. But Tessa, and her two equally determined sisters, live in 1900s London, in a strict Spanish-Irish Catholic household, and girls do not have jobs let alone careers. Tessa wants to play her part in the family's sherry importation business and is resolute she will work. Her father is adamant she will not. Meeting Coty is a coming-of-age story about a young woman's battle for independence.

1796 Should Jiddy stay, or should she go? When Jonas left Robin Hood's Bay, he abandoned his vows to Jiddy. The sea engulfed Captain Samuel Ryethorpe, and his death exposed her once more as an outsider. Both young men believed they acted with high morals, but it was the amoral Captain Pinkney who threw Jiddy a lifeline. Now, the defiant seventeen-year-old resolves to find choices and freedom for local girls battered by poverty and confined by an insular community. Jiddy is determined. No man, no government, no place will hold them back.

Jiddy Vardy relishes her return to Robin Hood's Bay... ...where high spring tides cans sweep unsuspecting strangers into deep water. Jiddy is immediately immersed in smuggling runs, childhood friendships and the kisses of the one she loves. She is in her element, and she is invincible. But Jonas wants to earn an 'honest' living. Jiddy's adoptive mam is sick, and the captain of the Dragoons is more determined than ever to capture Bay Town's intrepid smugglers. As stakes rise higher, Jiddy has to decide whether to abandon the life she loves or lose Jonas forever.

1779 On tumultuous waters a girl is born as pirates board the ship... Jiddy Vardy is a survivor. Rescued at birth, she grows up in Robin Hood's Bay, a community which harbours a dangerous secret that could get you killed. Always the outsider, with her dark skin and hair, at sixteen, Jiddy is clever, brave and headstrong, soon risking her life and freedom to play her part in the Bay's clandestine activities.

It's 1654 Gwynn's Island, Virginia. Disease and pestilence is sweeping across the island. John's wife has become gravely ill. He must decide between staying by her side or going in search of a miraculous medicine woman rumoured to be staying with native Indians to the north. The journey will be arduous, crossing vast terrains and perilous waters, but as he looks down upon her sweat-soaked brow, he knows in an instant that the slim hope of saving her is worth risking whatever lies ahead. If he fails John knows, he may never see his love again.

The rise of authoritarian aggression abroad thrusts the dashing British Military Intelligence officer, Richard Cordwell, into mortal danger as he faces his most formidable foe to date, only to be saved by the beautiful French spy Madame Duvernay. Meanwhile, at home, mirroring today’s cultural wars and the controversy over book bans, passage of the anti-obscenity Comstock Law creates an uproar in New York City as it puts an innocent woman on trial.

Fourteen-year-old Lori Hopkins, an only child, loses her parents to a devastating storm while she sleeps soundly in a fallout shelter she decorated for Christmas. Her grandmother, Lottie, discovers Lori as rescue workers sift through the above-ground carnage.